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"[Science fiction] is the only kind of writing that allows you to look at the world we live in and change one piece at a time."
- Frederik Pohl

Semi-Conducting Graphite-Gel  
  Computer brain structured like animal brain.  

In the story, the wheelies are learning robots.

...in the actual living animal brain, the whole system of synapses, neurons and connecting fibers was there to start with, and repeated activity would produce useful patterns, but with the wheelies' undifferentiated mass of semi-conducting graphite-gel it was more like the lining up of polarized particles in a magnetic field.
Technovelgy from Callahan and the Wheelies, by Stephen Barr.
Published by Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1960
Additional resources -

Compare to the positronic brain from Isaac Asimov's 1941 short story Reason and the Artificial Brain from Edmond Hamilton's 1926 story The Metal Giants.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Callahan and the Wheelies
  More Ideas and Technology by Stephen Barr
  Tech news articles related to Callahan and the Wheelies
  Tech news articles related to works by Stephen Barr

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BMind Smart Mirror from Baracoda

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Science Fiction in the News

Brin's 1990 Novel Earth Still Full Of Predictions
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'

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'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'

Microsoft VASA-1 Creates Personal Video From A Photo
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'

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'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'

Bespoke Environment Music From AIs
'Call 'em Winter Mute," said the other, making it two words.'

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'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'

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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'

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'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'

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